The Table Often Lies.

The group phase of the Champions League is cleverly designed to maintain interest to the end of match day six.

The winners of the group are seeded to meet the runners up from the other groups, subject to a restriction that prevents a team playing another from the same country.

The third placed teams become the favourites to lift the Europa League and the fourth placed teams get to spend more quality time with their families.

Group

Team

% To Win Group

% To Qualify

% To Drop into Europa League

Median Points Total

E	Barcelona	85	97	2	14
E	Roma	9	55	34	8
E	Bayer Leverkusen	6	40	40	7
E	BATE Borisov	1	8	23	4

So even if one team is strongly favoured to win the group, there is likely much to play for over the full course of the twelve games.

Group E was the easiest to predict the most likely winner. Top ranked Spanish Champions League representatives are generally superior to second ranked Serie A teams, who in turn are superior to below average German qualifiers. Each of which are superior to a champion from Belarus.

My pre tournament estimation of the chances of each team filling a particular spot for Pinnacle can be seen in the table above.

Others took a slightly more optimistic view of the chances of Bayer Leverkusen and a typical average points expectation based on reported odds was an average of 13.5 points for Barcelona, 9 for Bayer Leverkusen, 8 for Roma and 3 for BATE Borisov.

Already we have a dilemma in deciding if finishing position fully reflects talent. Namely, opinions differ as to who is the best to start with and the argument begins to become circular.

If we again treat the bookmaking odds as all seeing and able to perfectly capture the true chances of each side in each individual group match, it would be useful to know how often the teams finish in the order predicted by the bookmaking.

36% of Group E simulations finish with Barca as top seed, Leverkusen as runner up, Roma as Europa League bound and BATE going home where each team plays six matches.

If we double the tournament length so that each team plays twelve rather than six games, a finishing order that reflects the odds we've used in the simulations is still less than a 50% chance.

Quadrupling the length of the group stage to 24 matches per team produces the desired order to reflect talent just over 60% of the time.

Should you wish to trade increasing certainty for viewer indifference, a 96 game per team schedule pushes to beyond 77% the percentage of iterations with Barca as seeded knockout stage entrants, followed by Leverkusen and Roma Europa League bound.

Competitions must strike a balance to reward talent (to please the participants) and maintain a degree of uncertainty (to enthrall the audience), while sticking to a manageable time frame.

So in the real world, especially where teams are closely matched, the table often lies.